Working on our Spatial Reasoning, Sorting and More this Month

Growing up, I was always either really great at a subject in school, or really struggled with it. Anything that involved studying history, literature or science on a broad level peaked my interest and that reflected four times a year on a piece of paper sent home to my parents.

Math was not one of those subjects that I was not excited to delve deeper into; and I never found myself proudly telling my parents a 10 question math quiz score. Later on in my education, I learned that I had some more specific learning struggles, but was always "smart enough" to get by. One challenge that you may never even think of in a child's education is spatial reasoning. I couldn't line up questions with the fill in the bubble answers on a standardized test. I was terrible at geometry, because concepts never clicked and even things like drawing a picture with perspective in elementary art was a chore.

While my son is preschool aged, I do see some similar struggles. We sometimes do workbooks, and I noticed that he skips lines of work, or struggles space out letters if he wants to write a word. He also seems to need a bit more repetition when it comes to mathematical concepts.

I am not overly concerned about any of this at this given moment. However, knowing what it feels like to have struggled in certain areas, I feel it only makes sense to equip my child with strategies and tools to make his education as smooth and enjoyable of a process from an early age.

Over the last year that we have used the Mother Goose Time curriculum, we have received so many amazing math manipulatives, patterning cards, as well as science and art project ideas that help my son work on things that might not come as easily to him.

This week, we made icicles with tin foil, straws and silvery pie cleaners. My son and I both participated. While we worked, I mentioned the notes about icicle formation that Mother Goose Time provided. I also asked him if he could make a collage of icicles grouped close together, and help me make mine more spaced out. It is amazing how simple, creative projects can help build his understanding of spatial reasoning.

We also made snowmen. My son made his own, start to finish. At the beginning of the project, I asked him to the write the letters of his name in the circles provided, and then glue them into a snowman. The one detail I told him I wanted was to be able to see all of the letters in his name, even after he glued the snowman together. It took extra concentration, but he blew me away with his work.

We also practiced our color sorting, counting and some addition with our math manipulatives. We searched for items in our winter wonderland poster and discussed how things related to one another based on there direction.

This Mother Goose Time box was provided to our family in exchange for our honest experience with the program. I am so glad it was, since it has even be extra tools to work on challenging areas of education in a fun way.